I don’t think I need to say anything here other than: Imax has put out a trailer for their hi-res 3D movie about the Hubble repair mission from May 2009.

Oh, yeah. I’m in.

Tip o’ the spherically aberrated mirror to my old friend from college Christy Venters. Hi Christy!

In the science world, if there is an overwhelming complaint about the media, it is that journalists tend to be too “balanced”–in other words, they give roughly 50-50 time to opposing viewpoints even when one side lacks credibility, as in the creationism-evolution battle.

In 2004 in Columbia Journalism Review, I did a major article critiquing this problem in science coverage–an article that I guess a lot of people read and liked, since it is still mentioned to me regularly. Recently, in fact, John Fleck emailed to ask why it wasn’t available online–and I decided to do something about that.

So here it is, “Blinded by Science,” a kind of classic critique of “phony balance” in science coverage:

BLINDED BY SCIENCE: How ‘Balanced’ Coverage Lets the Scientific Fringe Hijack Reality

Columbia Journalism Review, Nov/Dec2004, Vol. 43, Issue 4

On May 22, 2003, the Los Angeles Times printed a front-page story by Scott Gold, its respected Houston bureau chief, about the passage of a law in Texas requiring abortion doctors to warn women that the procedure might cause breast cancer. Virtually no mainstream scientist believes that the so-called ABC link actually exists — only anti-abortion activists do. Accordingly, Gold’s article noted right off the bat that the American Cancer Society discounts the “alleged link” and that anti-abortionists have pushed for “so-called counseling” laws only after failing in their attempts to have abortion banned. Gold also reported that the National Cancer Institute had convened “more than a hundred of the world’s experts” to assess the ABC theory, which they rejected. In comparison to these scientists, Gold noted, the author of the Texas counseling bill — who called the ABC issue “still disputed” — had “a professional background in property management.”

Gold’s piece was hard-hitting but accurate. The scientific consensus is quite firm that abortion does not cause breast cancer. If reporters want to take science and its conclusions seriously, their reporting should reflect this reality — no matter what antiabortionists say.

But what happened next illustrates one reason journalists have such a hard time calling it like they see it on science issues. In an internal memo exposed by the Web site LAobserved.com, the Times’s editor, John Carroll, singled out Gold’s story for harsh criticism, claiming it vindicated critics who accuse the paper of liberal bias. Carroll specifically criticized Gold’s “so-called counseling” line (”a phrase that is loaded with derision”) and his “professional background in property management” quip (”seldom will you read a cheaper shot than this”). “The story makes a strong case that the link between abortion and breast cancer is widely discounted among researchers,” Carroll wrote, “but I wondered as I read it whether somewhere there might exist some credible scientist who believes in it …. Apparently the scientific argument for the anti-abortion side is so absurd that we don’t need to waste our readers’ time with it.”

Gold declined to comment specifically on Carroll’s memo, except to say that it prompted “a sound and good discussion of the standards that we all take very seriously.” For his part, Carroll — now editing his third newspaper — is hardly so naive as to think journalistic “balance” is synonymous with accuracy. In an interview, he nevertheless defended the memo, observing that “reporters have to make judgments about the validity of ideas” but that “a reporter has to be broad-minded in being open to ideas that aren’t necessarily shared by the crowd he or she happens to be hanging around with.” Carroll adds that in his view, Gold needed to find a credible scientist to defend the ABC claim, rather than merely quoting a legislator and then exposing that individual’s lack of scientific background. “You have an obligation to find a scientist, and if the scientist has something to say, then you can subject the scientist’s views to rigorous examination,” Carroll says.

The trouble is, the leading proponent of the idea that abortions cause breast cancer, Dr. Joel Brind of Baruch College at the City University of New York, underwent a pro-life religious conversion that left him feeling “compelled to use science for its noblest, life-saving purpose,” as he put it in Physician, a magazine published by a conservative religious group called Focus on the Family. Brind’s dedication to the ABC theory has flown in the face of repeated negative critiques of that theory by his scientific peers. When the National Cancer Institute convened the world’s experts to assess the question in February 2003, Brind was the only dissenter from the group’s conclusions.

Nevertheless, a later article by Gold suggests he may have taken Carroll’s lesson to heart (though Gold says the piece “certainly wasn’t a direct response, or an attempt to change anything or compensate” following Carroll’s memo). On November 6, 2003, Gold reported on a push in Texas to revise the way biology textbooks teach the scientific theory of evolution, which some religious conservatives don’t accept. Gold opened with a glowing profile of one William Dembski, described as a “scientist by trade” but “an evangelical Christian at heart who is convinced that some biological mechanisms are too complex to have been created without divine guidance.” But according to his Web site, Dembski is a philosopher and mathematician, not a biologist. Moreover, he’s a leader of the new “intelligent design” crusade against Darwin’s theory, an updated form of creationism that evolutionary biologists have broadly denounced. (He recently took a job running the Center for Science and Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.) The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest scientific society and publisher of Science, the highest-circulation general scientific journal, has firmly stated that proponents have “failed to offer credible scientific evidence to support their claim” that the intelligent design theory “undermines the current scientifically accepted theory of evolution.”

Scott Gold had it exactly right on abortion and breast cancer. Then he produced an article on “intelligent design” so artificially “balanced” it was downright inaccurate and misleading.

* * * * *

The basic notion that journalists should go beyond mere “balance” in search of the actual truth hardly represents a novel insight. This magazine, along with its political Web site, Campaign Desk, has been part of a rising chorus against a prevalent but lazy form of journalism that makes no attempt to dig beneath competing claims. But for journalists raised on objectivity and tempered by accusations of bias, knowing that phony balance can create distortion is one thing and taking steps to fix the reporting is another.

Political reporting hardly presents the only challenge for journalists seeking to go beyond he said/she said accounts, or even the most difficult one. Instead, that distinction may be reserved for media coverage of contested scientific issues, many of them with major policy ramifications, such as global climate change. After all, the journalistic norm of balance has no corollary in the world of science. On the contrary, scientific theories and interpretations survive or perish depending upon whether they’re published in highly competitive journals that practice strict quality control, whether the results upon which they’re based can be replicated by other scientists, and ultimately whether they win over scientific peers. When consensus builds, it is based on repeated testing and retesting of an idea.

Journalists face a number of pressures that can prevent them from accurately depicting competing scientific claims in terms of their credibility within the scientific community as a whole. First, reporters must often deal with editors who reflexively cry out for “balance.” Meanwhile, determining how much weight to give different sides in a scientific debate requires considerable expertise on the issue at hand. Few journalists have real scientific knowledge, and even beat reporters who know a great deal about certain scientific issues may know little about other ones they’re suddenly asked to cover.

Moreover, the question of how to substitute accuracy for mere “balance” in science reporting has become ever more pointed as journalists have struggled to cover the Bush administration, which scientists have widely accused of scientific distortions. As the Union of Concerned Scientists, an alliance of citizens and scientists, and other critics have noted, Bush administration statements and actions have often given privileged status to a fringe scientific view over a well-documented, extremely robust mainstream conclusion. Journalists have thus had to decide whether to report on a he said/she said battle between scientists and the White House — which has had very few scientific defenders — or get to the bottom of each case of alleged distortion and report on who’s actually right.

No wonder scientists have often denounced the press for giving credibility to fringe scientific viewpoints. And without a doubt, the topic on which scientists have most vehemently decried both the media and the Bush administration is global warming. While some scientific uncertainty remains in the climate field, the most rigorous peer-reviewed assessments — produced roughly every five years by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — have cemented a consensus view that human greenhouse gas emissions are probably (i.e., the conclusion has a fairly high degree of scientific certainty) helping to fuel the greenhouse effect and explain the observed planetary warming of the past fifty years. Yet the Bush administration has consistently sought to undermine this position by hyping lingering uncertainties and seeking to revise government scientific reports. It has also relied upon energy interests and a small cadre of dissenting scientists (some of whom are funded, in part, by industry) in formulating climate policy.

The centrality of the climate change issue to the scientific critique of the press does not arise by accident. Climate change has mind-bogglingly massive ramifications, not only for the future of our carbon-based economy but for the planet itself. Energy interests wishing to stave off action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have a documented history of supporting the small group of scientists who question the human role in causing climate change — as well as consciously strategizing about how to sow confusion on the issue and sway journalists.

In 1998, for instance, John H. Cushman, Jr., of The New York Times exposed an internal American Petroleum Institute memo outlining a strategy to invest millions to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours with Congress, the media and other key audiences.” Perhaps most startling, the memo cited a need to “recruit and train” scientists “who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate” to participate in media outreach and counter the mainstream scientific view. This seems to signal an awareness that after a while, journalists catch on to the connections between contrarian scientists and industry. But in the meantime, a window of opportunity apparently exists when reporters can be duped by fresh faces.

“There’s a very small set of people” who question the consensus, says Science’s executive editor-in-chief, Donald Kennedy. “And there are a great many thoughtful reporters in the media who believe that in order to produce a balanced story, you’ve got to pick one commentator from side A and one commentator from side B. I call it the two-card Rolodex problem.”

The Stanford climatologist Stephen Schneider echoes this concern. A scientist whose interactions with the media on the subject of climate change span decades, Schneider has reflected at length on the subject, especially in his 1989 book Global Warming. Schneider’s climate-change Web site also devotes a section to what he calls “Mediarology,” where he notes that in science debates “there are rarely just two polar opposite sides, but rather a spectrum of potential outcomes, oftentimes accompanied by a considerable history of scientific assessment of the relative credibility of these many possibilities. A climate scientist faced with a reporter locked into the ‘get both sides’ mindset risks getting his or her views stuffed into one of two boxed storylines: ‘we’re worried’ or ‘it will all be okay.’ And sometimes, these two ‘boxes’ are misrepresentative; a mainstream, well-established consensus may be ‘balanced’ against the opposing views of a few extremists, and to the uninformed, each position seems equally credible.”

Academics have studied media coverage of climate change, and the results confirm climate scientists’ longstanding complaints. In a recent paper published in the journal Global Environmental Change, the scholars Maxwell T. Boykoff and Jules M. Boykoff analyzed coverage of the issue in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times between 1988 and 2002. During this fourteen-year period, climate scientists successfully forged a powerful consensus on human-caused climate change. But reporting in these four major papers did not at all reflect this consensus.

The Boykoffs analyzed a random sample of 636 articles. They found that a majority — 52.7 percent — gave “roughly equal attention” to the scientific consensus view that humans contribute to climate change and to the energy-industry-supported view that natural fluctuations suffice to explain the observed warming. By comparison, just 35.3 percent of articles emphasized the scientific consensus view while still presenting the other side in a subordinate fashion. Finally, 6.2 percent emphasized the industry-supported view, and a mere 5.9 percent focused on the consensus view without bothering to provide the industry/skeptic counterpoint.

Most intriguing, the Boykoffs’ study found a shift in coverage between 1988 — when climate change first garnered wide media coverage — and 1990. During that period, journalists broadly moved from focusing on scientists’ views of climate change to providing “balanced” accounts. During this same period, the Boykoffs noted, climate change became highly politicized and a “small group of influential spokespeople and scientists emerged in the news” to question the mainstream view that industrial emissions are warming the planet. The authors conclude that the U.S. “prestige-press” has produced “informationally biased coverage of global warming … hidden behind the veil of journalistic balance.”

In a rich irony, a UPI report on August 30, 2004, about the Boykoffs’ study covered it in — that’s right — a thoroughly “balanced” fashion. The article gave considerable space to the viewpoint of Frank Maisano, a former spokesman for the industry-sponsored Global Climate Coalition and a professional media consultant, who called the Boykoffs’ contentions “absolutely outrageous” and proceeded to reiterate many of the dubious criticisms of mainstream climate science for which the “skeptic” camp is so notorious. In the process, the UPI piece epitomized all the pathologies of U.S. coverage of climate change — pathologies that aren’t generally recapitulated abroad. Media research suggests that U.S. journalists cover climate change very differently from their European counterparts, often lending much more credence to the viewpoints of “skeptics” like Maisano.

In an interview, Maxwell Boykoff — an environmental studies Ph.D. candidate at the University of California at Santa Cruz — noted that if there’s one American journalist who cuts against the grain in covering the climate issue, it’s Andrew C. Revkin of The New York Times. That’s revealing, because Revkin happens to be the only reporter at any of the major newspapers studied who covers “global environmental change” as his exclusive beat, which Revkin says means writing about climate change “close to half” of the time. Revkin has also been covering global warming since 1988 and has written a book on the topic. (This fall he began teaching environmental reporting as an adjunct at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.)

Revkin agrees with the basic thrust of the Boykoff study, but he also notes that the analysis focuses only on the quantitative aspect of climate-change coverage, rather than more subtle qualitative questions such as how reporters “characterize the voices” of the people they quote.

After all, the issue isn’t just how many column inches journalists give to the perspective of climate-change “skeptics” versus the mainstream view. It’s also how they identify these contrarian figures, many of whom have industry ties. Take a January 8, 2004, article by The Washington Post’s Guy Gugliotta, reporting on a study in the journal Nature finding that global warming could “drive 15 to 37 percent of living species toward extinction by mid-century.” Gugliotta’s story hardly suffered from phony balance. But when it did include a “skeptic” perspective — in a thoroughly subordinate fashion in the ninth paragraph — the skeptic’s industry ties went unmentioned:

One skeptic, William O’Keefe, president of the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative science policy organization, criticized the Nature study, saying that the research ‘ignored species’ ability to adapt to higher temperatures’ and assumed that technologies will not arise to reduce emissions.

What Gugliotta didn’t say is this: the Marshall Institute receives substantial support from oil giant ExxonMobil, a leading funder of think tanks, frequently conservative in orientation, that question the scientific consensus on climate change. Moreover, O’Keefe himself has chaired the anti-Kyoto Protocol Global Climate Coalition, and served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the American Petroleum Institute. Senate documents from 2001 through 2003 also list him as a registered lobbyist for ExxonMobil. (To be fair, when I discussed this matter with O’Keefe while working on a previous article, he said that he registers as a lobbyist “out of an abundance of caution” and keeps his ExxonMobil and Marshall Institute work “separate.”)

Asked about all of this, Gugliotta said he simply didn’t know of O’Keefe’s industry connections at the time. He said he considered O’Keefe a “reasoned skeptic” who provided a measured perspective from the other side of the issue. Fair enough. His industry ties don’t necessarily detract from that, but readers still should know about them.

The point isn’t to single out Gugliotta — any number of other examples could be found. And such omissions don’t merely occur on the news pages. Some major op-ed pages also appear to think that to fulfill their duty of providing a range of views, they should publish dubious contrarian opinion pieces on climate change even when those pieces are written by nonscientists. For instance, on July 7, 2003, The Washington Post published a revisionist op-ed on climate science by James Schlesinger, a former secretary of both energy and defense, and a former director of Central Intelligence. “In recent years the inclination has been to attribute the warming we have lately experienced to a single dominant cause — the increase in greenhouse gases,” wrote Schlesinger. “Yet climate has always been changing — and sometimes the swings have been rapid.” The clear implication was that scientists don’t know enough about the causes of climate change to justify strong pollution controls.

That’s not how most climatologists feel, but then Schlesinger is an economist by training, not a climatologist. Moreover, his Washington Post byline failed to note that he sits on the board of directors of Peabody Energy, the largest coal company in the world, and has since 2001. Peabody has resisted the push for mandatory controls on greenhouse gas emissions, such as those that would be required by the Kyoto Protocol. In a 2001 speech, the Peabody executive John Wootten argued that “there remains great uncertainty in the scientific understanding of climate,” and that “imposition of immediate constraints on emissions from fossil-fuel use is not warranted.”

Funny, that’s pretty much what Schlesinger argued.

* * * * * *

For another group of scientists, the grievances with the press have emerged more recently, but arguably with far greater force. That’s because on an issue of great concern to these scientists — the various uses and abuses of somatic cell nuclear transfer, or cloning — journalists have swallowed the claims of the scientific fringe hook, line, and sinker.

Consider the great 2002 cloning hoax. In the media lull following Christmas, one Brigitte Boisselier — the “scientific director” of Clonaid, a company linked to the UFO-obsessed Raelian sect, and already a semi-celebrity who had been profiled in The New York Times Magazine — announced the birth of the world’s first cloned baby. At her press conference, covered live by CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, Boisselier could not even produce a picture of the alleged child — “Eve” — much less independent scientific verification of her claims. She instead promised proof within eight or nine days. Needless to say, the whole affair should have made the press wary.

Nevertheless, a media frenzy ensued, with journalists occasionally mocking and questioning the Raelians while allowing their claims to drive the coverage. CNN’s medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, provided a case in point. When he interviewed Boisselier following her press conference, Gupta called Clonaid a group with “the capacity to clone” and told Boisselier, credulously, “We are certainly going to be anxiously awaiting to see some of the proof from these independent scientists next week.”

Perhaps most outspoken in criticizing the press during the Clonaid fiasco was Arthur Caplan, the University of Pennsylvania biomedical ethicist. As one of the nation’s most quoted bioethicists, Caplan had the advantage of actual access to the media during the feeding frenzy. Yet that familiarity made little difference. As Caplan complained in an MSNBC.com column following the Raelians’ announcement, no one wanted to listen to his skepticism because that would have required dropping the story: “As soon as I heard about the Raelians’ cloning claim, I knew it was nonsense,” wrote Caplan. “The media have shown themselves incapable of covering the key social and intellectual phenomena of the 21st century, namely the revolution in genetics and biology.”

Caplan observed that Clonaid had no scientific peer-reviewed publications to prove its techniques were up to snuff, and that cloning had barely worked in live animal species, and then only after countless initial failures. Nevertheless, Clonaid had implausibly claimed a stunning success rate — five pregnancies in ten attempts — in its experiments.

The Clonaid fiasco shows the media at their absolute worst in covering scientific issues. Reviewing the coverage two years later is a painful exercise. As even Gupta later admitted, “I think if we had known … that there was going to be no proof at this press conference, I think that we probably would have pulled the plug.” Later on, even the Raelians themselves reportedly laughed at how easy it was to get free publicity.

But this wasn’t just fun and games. The political consequences of the press’s cloning coverage were considerable. Widespread fear of human cloning inevitably lends strength to sweeping legislation that would ban all forms of cloning, despite the fact that many scientists think the cloning of embryos for research purposes holds significant medical promise; it would allow for the creation of embryonic-stem-cell lines genetically matched to individual patients. Thus, on an issue where one side of the debate thrives on fear, the media delivered exactly what these cloning-ban advocates desired. Where the press’s unjustifiable addiction to “balance” on climate change produces a political stalemate on a pressing issue of global consequence, its addiction to cloning cranks provided a potent political weapon to the enemies of crucial research.

None of those examples of poorly “balanced” science reporting arise from precisely the same set of journalistic shortcomings. In Scott Gold’s case at the Los Angeles Times, he appears to have known the scientific issues perfectly well. That gave his writing an authority that set off warning bells in an editor wary of bias. That’s very different from the Clonaid example, where sheer credulousness among members of the media — combined with sensationalism and a slow news period — were the problem. And that’s different still from the problem of false balance in the media coverage of climate change in the U.S., which has been chronic for more than a decade.

Yet in each case, the basic journalistic remedy would probably be the same. As a general rule, journalists should treat fringe scientific claims with considerable skepticism, and find out what major peer-reviewed papers or assessments have to say about them. Moreover, they should adhere to the principle that the more outlandish or dramatic the claim, the more skepticism it warrants. The Los Angeles Times’s Carroll observes that “every good journalist has a bit of a contrarian in his soul,” but it is precisely this impulse that can lead reporters astray. The fact is, nonscientist journalists can all too easily fall for scientific-sounding claims that they can’t adequately evaluate on their own.

That doesn’t mean that scientific consensus is right in every instance. There are famous examples, in fact, of when it was proved wrong: Galileo comes to mind, as does a lowly patent clerk named Einstein. In the vast majority of modern cases, however, scientific consensus can be expected to hold up under scrutiny precisely because it was reached through a lengthy and rigorous process of professional skepticism and criticism. At the very least, journalists covering science-based policy debates should familiarize themselves with this professional proving ground, learn what it says about the relative merits of competing claims, and “balance” their reports accordingly.

The effects of circumcision on the penis microbiome.

“METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We assessed the penile (coronal sulci) microbiota in 12 HIV-negative Ugandan men before and after circumcision… …Among the 42 unique bacterial families identified, Pseudomonadaceae and Oxalobactericeae were the most abundant irrespective of circumcision status. Circumcision was associated with a significant change in the overall microbiota (PerMANOVA p = 0.007) and with a significant decrease in putative anaerobic bacterial families (Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test p = 0.014)…. …[The] reduction in putative anaerobic bacteria after circumcision may play a role in protection from HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.”

Next they should sequence the micropenis microbiome.

Thanks to Matt for today’s ROFL!

Satellite photos that have just been released reveal the scope of the physical destruction wrought by the 7.0 earthquake that struck the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince on Tuesday. The human toll of is still unknown–but with much of the city reduced to rubble, experts say tens of thousands of people may be dead.

This image shows roads covered with debris from collapsed structures, and the white-colored National Palace with damage visible along the roof line. The image was taken by the GeoEye-1 satellite from 423 miles up in space on Wednesday morning.

Image: GeoEye

Alligators breathe like birds, with a one-way tube that flows all the way through their respiratory systems. While that might not seem earth-shattering at first, alligators and birds diverged 246 million years ago. And according to a new study in Science, that means this breathing technique goes way, way back, and could even explain how the ancestors of dinosaurs survived the great Permian-Triassic extinction.

Unlike a mammal’s breath, which exits the lungs from the same dead-end chambers it enters, a bird’s breath takes a loopy one-way street through its lungs [Science News]. This breathing technique allows birds to explore high altitudes where oxygen levels drop off significantly.

If the archosaurs—ancestors to birds and alligators—breathed this way, it could have given them an advantage when oxygen level tanked 250 million years ago and lots of species died off. Before the extinction, synapsids, the ancestors to modern mammals, were the dominant group. But after the extinction, the archosaurs dwarfed the synapsids, Farmer said. Prestosuchids, for example, could reach 23 feet in length, while mammals’ ancestors maxed out at just a few feet [Wired.com].

One burning question remains, though: How the heck did we miss this for so long? “People incorrectly believe that you must have avian-style air sacs in order to have unidirectional flow,” says C.G. Farmer of the University of Utah, a coauthor of the new study. “Alligators don’t have air sacs, so no one ever looked” [Science News]. But there it was, hiding in plain sight—presuming you have the stomach to study alligator lungs.

Related Links:
80beats: New Fossil Suggests Dinosaur World Domination Started in South America
80beats: Found: Dino-Munching Crocodiles Who Swam in the Sahara
80beats: Extinct Goat Tried Out Reptilian, Cold-Blooded Living (It Didn’t Work)
80beats: Dinosaurs Ruled the World Because They “Got Lucky,” Say Scientists

Image: C.G. Farmer, Science/AAAS

Do you read the web comic Tree Lobsters? It has lots of good skeptical and critical messages, and it’s pretty funny. This panel is from a particularly good one; click it to see the rest.

And who knew Jenny McCarthy had a chitinous exoskeleton?

There’s a new addition to the parade of studies investigating potential health problems connected to the ubiquitous plastics ingredient bisphenol A (BPA). But while the new data backs up the connection between BPA and heart disease that appeared in previous studies, the nature of the link still isn’t conclusive, and other links are not clear.

The study in PLoS One analyzed data gathered between 2003 and 2006. The association with diabetes is a bit weaker [than shown in earlier studies], but the one with heart disease remains robust. In fact, the authors are able to show a linear relationship between BPA exposure and cardiovascular disease in both data sets [Ars Technica]. While the authors confirmed that BPA-heart disease link from their 2008 study, they said they still could not sufficiently tell correlation versus causation and called for more study.

They did find another interesting tidbit, though, this one being on the good side. BPA levels in the urine of test participants plunged by 28 percent from the 2003/04 period to the 2005/06 period. That’s odd because it predates the wave of public concern over BPA, though perhaps changed industry practices are responsible, study author David Melzer says. “BPA in baby’s bottles has been very controversial and we speculate that manufacturers may be switching to other plastics for use involving food and beverages” [Scientific American].

Related Content:
80beats: Study: The Chemical BPA, in High Doses, Causes Impotence
80beats: More Bad News on BPA: Linked to Heart Disease and Diabetes in Humans
80beats: BPA Won’t Leave Public-Health Conversation—or Your Body
80beats: Plastic Is More Biodegradable Than We Thought. (That’s Bad.)
80beats: FDA Declares Chemical in Baby Bottles Safe, But Doubts Remain
DISCOVER: The Dirty Truth About Plastic

Image: iStockphoto

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yesterday, January 13, 2010 there was an object that made a rather close pass at the earth.  There had been quite a bit of speculation as to what it really was, some thinking it was a piece of space junk, I even heard the rocket from ESA’s Venus Express.  The object has an orbit extending roughly from the orbit of Venus to the orbit of Mars and crosses Earth’s orbit at a steep angle the idea of a rocket stage is not considered likely by folks at the JPL NEO program.

The object passed the Earth about a third of the distance of the moon – VERY CLOSE.  The You Tube video at the top of the post was done by Patrick Wiggins, you can see the asteroid moving across the central portion of the video.  Video link.

Turns out the object is believed to be an asteroid, sized about 30 by 50 feet and is now named 2010 AL30.  The object passed very close and JPL points out there are about 2 million such objects and the likelihood of a pass within 1 lunar distance is about once per week.  Still, the real exiting thing about this particular object is that it was spotted at all think about it – it’s teeny!  Ok so the object was only spotted on Monday but still that’s pretty good for something this small.  Add to that the fact that once it was announced and astronomers started looking for it, they were able to see and track it.  I wanted to have a go at it, but alas the clouds wouldn’t relent.

Astronomers  Ernesto Guido & Giovanni Sostero (Associazione Friulana Di Astronomia E Meteorologia), are some of the best photographers of comets and objects like this.  They have more images at their site located at:  http://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2010/01/neo-2010-al30-close-approach.html

Oh by the way, I’ve seen reports suggesting this object had something to do with the terrible earthquake tragedy unfolding down in Haiti.  These people are crackpots and should be embarrassed from their own thoughtless stupidity.  So there.

One other thing, remember the name of this asteroid because it will be back perhaps in riddle form.  No Marian might not, but I might

A small (10 meter wide) asteroid will pass by the Earth Wednesday, at 12:47 UT. This tiny rock, called 2010 AL30, will pass us at a safe distance of 130,000 km (80,000 miles). As cosmic encounters go, this is a hair’s breadth, but in human terms it’s a long way off; as this graphic makes clear. It’s about a third of the way to the Moon.

2010 AL30 was only discovered on Monday. It’s escaped our previous notice because it’s dinky. Even when it passes you’ll need a telescope to see it. There has been some speculation that this was a man-made object like a rocket booster, since it’s about the right size, and sometimes near-Earth objects turn out to be space junk. But in this case the orbit doesn’t really match any rocket trajectory, so it’s probably a natural rock.

And since I know someone would ask, if this were aimed at us, it would probably explode high up in the atmosphere and not hit the ground. It would be quite a show, but most likely wouldn’t do any damage on the ground (even if it were iron, at that size it’s unlikely it would make it to the ground, and instead would tear itself to pieces on the way in).

And one last thing: note what I titled this post. Now look around the web to see how other articles are titled. Just sayin’.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Mike Murray for putting that graphic together and letting me know about it.

Very rare, but fascinating.

Identification of gases responsible for the odour of human flatus and evaluation of a device purported to reduce this odour.

“BACKGROUND/AIMS: While the social significance of flatus derives mainly from its odour, previous studies have focused on the non-odoriferous components of rectal gas. The aims of the present study were to determine the role of sulphur-containing gases in flatus odour and test the efficacy of a device purported to reduce this odour. METHODS: Flatus was quantitatively collected via rectal tube from 16 healthy subjects who ingested pinto beans and lactulose to enhance flatus output. The concentrations of sulphur-containing gases in each passage were correlated with odour intensity assessed by two judges. Odour intensity was also determined after treatment of flatus samples with zinc acetate, which binds sulphydryl compounds (hydrogen sulphide and methanethiol), or activated charcoal. Utilising gastight Mylar pantaloons, the ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulphur-containing gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed. RESULTS: The main sulphur-containing flatus component was hydrogen sulphide (1.06 (0.2) mumol/l), followed by methanethiol (0.21 (0.04) mumol/l) and dimethyl sulphide (0.08 (0.01) mumol/l) (means (SEM)). Malodour significantly correlated with hydrogen sulphide concentration (p < or = 0.001). Zinc acetate reduced sulphur gas content but did not totally eliminate odour, while activated charcoal removed virtually all odour. The cushion absorbed more than 90% of the sulphur gases. CONCLUSION: Sulphur-containing gases are the major, but not the only, malodorous components of human flatus. The charcoal lined cushion effectively limits the escape of these sulphur-containing gases into the environment.”

We close with one more quote from To the Royal Academy of Farting:

What Comfort can the Vortices of Descartes give to a Man who has Whirlwinds in his Bowels! The Knowledge of Newton’s mutual Attraction of the Particles of Matter, can it afford Ease to him who is racked by their mutual Repulsion, and the cruel Distensions it occasions? The Pleasure arising to a few Philosophers, from seeing, a few Times in their Life, the Threads of Light untwisted, and separated by the Newtonian Prism into seven Colours, can it be compared with the Ease and Comfort every Man living might feel seven times a Day, by discharging freely the Wind from his Bowels? Especially if it be converted into a Perfume: For the Pleasures of one Sense being little inferior to those of another, instead of pleasing the Sight he might delight the Smell of those about him, & make Numbers happy, which to a benevolent Mind must afford infinite Satisfaction. The generous Soul, who now endeavours to find out whether the Friends he entertains like best Claret or Burgundy, Champagne or Madeira, would then enquire also whether they chose Musk or Lilly, Rose or Bergamot, and provide accordingly.

Thanks to Tusi for today’s ROFL!

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Asparagus, urine, farts, and Benjamin Franklin (Part I)
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: It’s like a Brita filter for your butt

It’s a really thoughtful (if not uncritical) review, and what stood out perhaps most is this great passage:

To combine my own personal view (which I have drifted into here, sorry…) with that of Unscientific America: Regular citizens and scientists are separated by a very narrow but very deep canyon, resting comfortably on either side of this canyon and vaguely aware of the others across the way. When science policy issues arise among the citizenry, the scientists don’t really play a role. When scientists lobby for their funding from the big agencies and other sources, they don’t really account for the people over on the other side of the canyon. This has been the case for years, and over this time, the social and cultural relevance of actual science has pretty much vanished among the [populace], and the ability to understand what motivates or interests the general public… or just even how to talk to them … has disappeared from the culture of science. Not that it was ever there. Looking back, it is clear that the bridges that did exist across this canyon were built by regular people inspired by the occasional super-communicator, such as Carl Sagan. Those bridges were not, in any systematic way, built by the scientists.

Thanks, Greg, for taking the time and giving the thought. Please read his full review here.

Two quick things about 2010 AL30, the small object that passed the Earth earlier today:

1) I wrote that it looks to be natural and not some booster, but now an ESA scientist says it might be a booster from Venus Express. His argument is a good one, but it’s difficult to prove.

2) Universe Today has a very cool animation of the object as it slid past us, created using 30 still images. It’s fun to watch, if a little dizzying.

Are we getting closer to our catastrophic annihilation?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has kept track of our impending doom for over 60 years. They use a clock to represent our current time, where midnight is complete catastrophe. Back in the good old days, this meant something prosaic like global nuclear conflagration. Nowadays, there are plenty of other things to add to the list, including global climatic collapse, avian swine ebola, and grey goo. The current time is 11:55pm. Uncomfortably late.

There’s no real metric with which to judge the “time”. The clock has an hour and minute hand, but no am/pm indicator, so in principle it can represent a total of twelve hours of unique settings. [For the sticklers, the clock in some sense lacks a unit of time; we need some other information to interpret what one of its minutes represents.] If we assume noon is “zero risk of annihilation”, and midnight is 100%, one approach would be to assume each advancing minute brings us 1/720 closer to our doom. This would mean that we presently have just under a 1% chance of ending it all. If we were to run through the last decade 200 times in a row, would we completely screw ourselves at least one time? This doesn’t sound all that unreasonable to me. Surely the odds were comparable to this during the Cuban missile crisis? (Although then the clock was at 11:53pm; it reacts to events on a relatively long timescale). The closest we’ve ever come to midnight was in the period 1953–1960, when both the US and the USSR were busy testing Hydrogen bombs. It was 11:58 pm. You might think we’re easily ten minutes earlier now, but the clock presently stands at 11:55pm. We’ve made some progress, but not nearly enough. In all likelihood, the clock was meant to be symbolic, and really only the minute hand matters. And the main message is that we are minutes away from catastrophe, so let’s all shape it up.

Tomorrow (1/14) at 10am EST the minute hand will move. You can watch it live. The big question is: which way will it go? On the one hand, the cold war seems reasonably contained, Obama has articulated a vision of a nuclear-free world (the first time a sitting US President has done so), and the world seems relatively peaceful at present. On the other hand, Pakistan and India are relatively unfriendly neighbors, North Korea is not a paragon of stability and good governance, and all three now have nuclear weapons. Furthermore, Iran seems hell bent on joining the nuclear club, and the Middle East is the usual quagmire. Perhaps even worse, global warming continues to be debated and questioned, while we continue to dump greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and change our planet.

Over the last two years, has our catastrophic demise approached or receded? We’ll find out what our friendly Atomic Scientists think in a few hours. But I’m curious to know what our readers think.

There’s a neat paper in Nature today suggesting that astrocytes, part of the brain’s hidden majority, plays a big role in the formation of memories. The Scientist has details. For background, check out my September Discover column.

Few things bring out the hyperbole like genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and that was true again with a study making the rounds yesterday and today.

In the International Journal of Biological Studies, a team examined three genetically modified corn varieties created by Monsanto. The study’s authors say they see evidence of possible toxicity to the kidney and liver, “possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn.” However, the findings became over-hyped headlines like the Huffington Post’s “Monsanto GMO Corn Linked to Organ Failure, Study Reveals.”

That’s a pretty big leap from the not entirely convincing finding of a potentially questionable study. What actually happened is that the research team, led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, re-analyzed data from tests that Monsanto scientists themselves conducted on rats eating these three varieties of corn—data that, to be fair, the team had to scratch and claw and sue to get their hands on. In their statistical analysis, Séralini’s team says that Monsanto interpreted its own data incorrectly, and that its new analysis shows potential for toxicity.

But the scientists themselves give significant caveats that make such bold headlines a bit of a reach: “Clearly, the statistically significant effects observed here for all three GM maize varieties investigated are signs of toxicity rather than proofs of toxicity”—that is, the evidence isn’t rock solid, and not enough to warrant a bunch of alarmist headlines. The researchers argue that more research is necessary to settle the question either way: “In conclusion, our data presented here strongly recommend that additional long-term (up to 2 years) animal feeding studies be performed in at least three species, preferably also multi-generational, to provide true scientifically valid data on the acute and chronic toxic effects of GM crops, feed and foods.”

In addition, there are a couple issues that make the study itself seem a little fishy:

1. Funding. “Greenpeace contributed to the start of the investigations by funding first statistical analyses in 2006, the results were then processed further and evaluated independently by the authors,” the scientists write. Certainly one can’t oppose a huge corporation like Monsanto without funding, but drawing those funds from a political lightning rod like Greenpeace can paint conclusions in a bad light, University of California, Davis, plant genomics expert Pamela Ronald tells DISCOVER. “That does not mean that it is incorrect,” she says, “but makes me a little skeptical.”

2. The journal: The International Journal of Biological Sciences is somewhat obscure, with an “unofficial”–that is, self-assigned–impact factor of 3.24. “In other words, it has not been assessed for impact or quality,” Ronald says. Again, that doesn’t mean Séralini’s team is wrong, but it suggests that jumping to conclusions would be unwise.

The actual data analysis of the paper has started an in-depth back-and-forth on the the statistical analysis. We’ll continue following this story to see how the analysis shakes out.

Related Content:
80beats: New Biotech Corn Gives Triple Vitamin Boost; Professors Unmoved
80beats: Germany Joins the European Mutiny of Genetically Modified Crops
DISCOVER: Genetically Altered Corn tells how a corn not intended for humans got into the food supply

Image: flickr / Peter Blanchard

We have a new set of brains to add to the Hive Overmind the family of Discover Magazine blogs: NCBI ROFL. I’ll leave the description to them:

We’re two PhD students in Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. Back in March of aught-nine, we started a little blog called “NCBI ROFL” in which we posted real scientific articles with funny subjects from the PubMed database (which is housed by the National Center for Biotechnology information, aka NCBI).

And how can you not love a blog that scientifically discusses a paper called “Accidental condom inhalation”?

Welcome to Discover Blogs!

Ah, the iPhone. What would life be without it?

You can get directions, make dinner reservations, break up via text and now, thanks to the latest app, you can get live streaming mugshots on your phone! Wait–is that mom?

Arrested! Mobile Mugshots prides itself on “Real People! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots! We collect mugshots from jails all over the USA and post them for you to view.”

The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the United States with full names, birth date, age, the date and time of arrest as well as the alleged crime.

Finally, a way to track Lindsay Lohan’s movements!

Check out some recent perps here.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Texting and Walking Made Easy With iPhone App
Discoblog: ZOMG! Get These iPhone Apps Right Meow!

Part animal, part plant, bright green, and totally bizarre: Meet the sea slug Elysia chlorotica.

Biologists already knew that this organism, native to the marshes of New England and Canada, was a thief that somehow pickpocketed genes from the algae it eats. At last week’s meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in Seattle, researcher Sidney Pierce said he has found that the slugs aren’t just kleptomaniacs—they use the pilfered genes not only to make chlorophyll, but also to execute photosynthesis and live like a plant. Said Pierce: “They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything,” Pierce said. “This is the first time that multicellular animals have been able to produce chlorophyll” [LiveScience].

The slug steals in a different way than most organisms (usually bacteria) that employ horizontal gene transfer to incorporate the DNA of others. Most of those hosts tuck in the partner cells whole in crevices or pockets among host cells. Pierce’s slug, however, takes just parts of cells, the little green photosynthetic organelles called chloroplasts, from the algae it eats. The slug’s highly branched gut network engulfs these stolen bits and holds them inside slug cells [Science News].

By using detectors to trace small amount of radioactivity, Pierce says he confirmed that the slug was actually using the stolen genes to produce the chlorophyll itself rather than snatching already-made chlorophyll from the algae. In addition, parent slugs pass on the genetic pathways for chlorophyll and photosynthesis to their offspring, showing it becomes incorporated into their genes.

Once again, nature reminds us, evolution can be wonderfully creative. “This could be a fusion of a plant and an animal — that’s just cool,” said invertebrate zoologist John Zardus [Science News].

Related Content:
80beats: Inside a Tree Leaf, It’s Always a Balmy 70 Degrees
80beats: Arsenic-Eating Bacteria May Resemble Early Life on Primordial Earth
The Loom: Going Green

Image: Nicholas E. Curtis and Ray Martinez

I am very pleased to announce that I have become a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, commonly known as CSI (and formerly known as CSICOP). CSI is one of the foremost skeptical organizations in the country and the world, and it is both humbling and an honor to be a part of it.

I was chosen along with other 15 other people, many of whom will be familiar to regular readers, including Skeptic Dictionary creator Bob Carroll, Steve Novella, Harriett Hall, Massimo Pigliucci, UK Skeptic’s Christopher French, Seth Shostak, and my fellow astronomer Jay Pasachoff. You can get the full list at the CSI announcement.

I’m also very happy to note that another of the new Fellows is one James Randi! Randi helped create CSICOP, but left years ago due to personal reasons when Uri Geller (boo!) sued both him and CSICOP. Randi has maintained a cordial relationship with the group over the years, and I know he’s personally very happy to be a part of CSI once again.

I’ve received a few emails from folks asking if my leaving the JREF to do TV work would take me away from doing skeptical outreach. It will be impacted, of course, but I hope this announcement lets you know that I will continue to do what I can to make this world a more reasonable place. I could no more stop doing that than I could stop blogging, or stop breathing, or stop being amazed at how wonderful our Universe is.

My thanks to the good folks at CSI, and to all of you who support me!